


Promise

by mistr3ssquickly



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, I'd say this is a Father's Day fic but I won't because that's just mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 15:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11234163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistr3ssquickly/pseuds/mistr3ssquickly
Summary: Luke makes Ben a promise.





	Promise

Luke is awake already when he hears Ben moving around, awake and meditating, going through exercises as familiar to him as the old, worn breeches he wears whenever he's escaped to spend time with his family, the ease with which he goes through them a comfort he finds himself seeking more often these days. He waits for Ben to work up the nerve to sneak out of his room, the boy's aura rich with the thrill of doing something he's not supposed to be doing, the excitement of going off on an adventure. Ever his mother's son, too young to be the poised, controlled figure of dignity Leia could become in the blink of an eye by the time Luke first met her, just as feisty and full of mischief as the woman Luke first met aboard the _Death Star,_ just as wild and uncontrollable as Leia has been and, Luke suspects, always will be.

He pushes himself to his feet and slips silently from his room when Ben _actually_ sneaks out of the house, clips his lightsaber to his belt as he goes, more out of habit than out of concern for his own or Ben's safety, leaving through the front door so as to avoid Ben's notice, the warm morning sunshine bright enough to make him squint as he steps out into the salt-laden air, the smell of the sea as powerful as ever, as close as they are to it, the pull of the water undoubtedly Ben's goal that morning.

Sure enough, that's where he finds Ben only minutes later, the boy’s shoes kicked carelessly aside in the sand and Ben himself standing barefoot at the very edge of the surf, watching it flow around his feet, seafoam and sand moving in contrast to his stillness, the ebb and flow mesmerizing, hypnotic under the cloud-streaked sky. He's safe enough where he is, old enough now to know not to go into the water without someone around to help him if he gets into trouble, but he's _thinking_ about getting in, all the same, relishing the adrenaline that accompanies the fantasy of diving into the power of the waves, thrilling in the fantasy of the attention he'd get if something _were_ to happen to him, his mother's and father's and uncle's concerns all justifying for him his importance to them, his central position in their big grown-up worlds.

Luke slips off his shoes and makes his way across the sand, taking care to keep Ben between himself and the sun, his shadow cast behind him, not giving away his position, the crash and grumble of the waves concealing his footsteps. "I remember the first time I saw the Corellian Sea," he says, waiting to speak until he's close enough to scare Ben out of his skin, gambling that he's given the boy enough of an adrenaline fix to keep him from jumping headfirst into the sea when Ben _shrieks_ and jumps like he's been attacked, falling into a messy defensive stance without conscious thought, an instinctive reaction that Luke is _beyond_ pleased to see, the fruits of his attempts to teach Ben discipline and defense apparently not the waste of time they seem so often to be. "I'd never imagined there could be so much water in the whole universe, let alone contained in one place on a single planet."

Ben blinks at him, silent for the long seconds it takes suspicion that he's in trouble to seep in as the initial jolt of fight-or-flight dies away. He drops his defensive posture like an afterthought, relaxing only marginally when Luke lowers himself to sit in the sand instead of scolding him, his feet stretched out before him, inches from the edge of the tide.

 _"This_ was familiar, though," Luke continues, lifting a handful of sand and relaxing his grip on it, allowing the grains to flow between his fingers, tossing dust into swirling clouds in the sea breeze. "Different from the sands I knew growing up, but more familiar to me than a body of saltwater."

He looks at Ben sidelong, taking in the crease forming between the boy's brows, Ben trying as hard as ever to figure out what his crazy uncle's talking about, justifiably suspicious that it's prelude to some life-lesson or proverb, something he'll be expected to apply to his exercises later on. Which it probably could be; if Luke's learnt anything over the years he's been struggling to learn and follow (and now teach) the Jedi way, it's that _everything_ has a meaning deeper than its surface appearance. But sitting in the sand, listening to the irregular heartbeat of the sea, the sun barely warm on his skin, a mere whisper in comparison to the suns he knew when he was Ben's age, he doesn't care to think too deeply about anything, doesn't care to engage with the Force any more than he does naturally, without conscious thought, the pulse of it around him no more noticeable or invasive than the beat of blood in his own veins. Easy to push aside, to ignore.

"I want to go to Tatooine, see it for myself," Ben tells him, picking up on Luke's relaxation and mirroring it, flopping down on the sand and folding his legs in a criss-cross before him, his shoulder slumped in a poor posture his mother wouldn't like if she were there to see it, "but mom and dad both said I can't. They said I'm too young, and it's too dangerous."

Luke lifts an eyebrow at the boy, reaching along the frantic, fractured thoughts of energetic youth to see what Leia and Han might have _actually_ told their son about Tatooine, surprised that either would be stupid enough to dangle danger in front of him and expect it to do anything but encourage him to run towards it full-speed, his father’s legacy alive and well in his cavalier attitude towards self-preservation. "Well," Luke says when he finds nothing of use and pulls back, looking out across the sea once again, "they're not lying to you about the dangers of Tatooine, but it's not the kind of danger you're imagining, I bet."

Ben rolls his eyes. "I know about the wildlife," he says, "and I'm not scared of the Hutts or any of the other criminals there. I can handle myself."

His mother murdered a Hutt with her bare hands while chained and starved and injured, but that's not Luke's story to share, so he keeps it to himself. "I had more in mind things like sandstorms and sunburn," he says. "Those are the _real_ threats on Tatooine. And dehydration. Probably dehydration more than anything else."

Ben wrinkles his nose. "That's stupid," he says.

"Which is what makes it so deadly," Luke tells him. "There's nothing more dangerous than an enemy you don't expect."

"It's the _sun,"_ Ben says, exasperated. “Not an _enemy.”_

"Yes, just the sun. Two of them, in fact," Luke says, "and you can get a sunburn from the first even before it's fully risen. Even when it's still cool out."

 _That_ piques Ben's curiosity, his eyebrows rising to his hairline. "I thought it was always hot on Tatooine."

"No, no, it's cold at night," Luke says. "It’s a dry planet, so there’s no cloud-cover to keep the heat in. You can die of exposure up in the higher elevations if you're out after the second sun sets and you don’t have proper protection. Your dad almost did, once, a few years before I first met him." He chuckles softly when he sees Ben's look of incredulity. "Ask him to tell you about it sometime. It's a good story."

One of his personal favorites out of all of Han’s tall, tall tales, a story Han told him their second night on Hoth when Luke dragged him into his quarters to share his bed, more interested in Han's body heat than anything else, the frigid cold of the planet seeping into his very _soul_ no matter what he did to warm up. Han'll have to gloss over some of the rougher edges of the story when he tells it to Ben, but Luke suspects those very edges were embellished for his benefit the night he heard the story for the first time, Han as eager as ever to impress him with his tales of adventure and danger.

"I still want to go," Ben says after a minute, digging his fingers into the sand and splaying them out like a spider, lifting his hand carefully so that thin ridges of sand remain along the backs of his fingers, shallowing and disappearing only when the breeze catches the grains and carries them away. "I want to build a lightsaber when I’m there. Like you did."

Luke swallows, unclipping his 'saber from his belt and turning it over in his hands. "I built mine there out of necessity --"

"-- so you could go save my mom and dad," Ben interrupts. “I know.”

"So I could help your mom save your dad," Luke corrects, "and only _if_ she needed my help."

"Which she did," Ben says.

"Only a little," Luke concedes.

Ben grins at him, and Luke makes mental note to ask Leia the next time he sees her what version of the truth she's told her son about their time on Tatooine, how much the boy knows about her enslavement and torture, about the absolute failure they came so desperately close to suffering. 

“You can build your lightsaber anywhere you want to,” he says, steering the conversation away from questions he isn’t ready to answer, should Ben think to ask them, “or anywhere you _need_ to. There wasn’t anything special about Tatooine.”

“It’s where you’re from,” Ben says.

Luke frowns. “It is, yeah.”

“So I want to go,” Ben says.

A child’s logic, nothing to read into too deeply, but it bothers Luke all the same, striking a discordant note that he tucks away to consider later in his meditations, maybe to share with Leia the next time he sees her. Probably not a compelling reason to leave his work on Corellia just to spend some time with Leia, not enough reason to leave Han in charge of Ben for the week or so he’ll be gone, but the thought to do just that is there, substantial enough that he tucks it away for later consideration, too.

“Some day,” he hears himself saying, “I’ll take you. It’s been a while since I last visited.”

Ben’s face lights up, so like his mother that it makes Luke homesick for her, affection tight like a knot in his throat. “Really?”

Luke nods. “Really.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Author’s notes_ :

This story was inspired by a conversation I had online about how much I don’t like Ep VII or Ben or any of the new generation. Go figure. It’s like my brain’s _super_ into writing whatever I _don’t_ want to write, or something.

Whatever. Enjoy a little peek into what Ben was like before he turned into an emo little shit and made his mother ~~and me~~ cry.


End file.
